


Celebrations

by stubborn_jerk



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol, Banter, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Driving, Fluff, Getting Together, Historical References, M/M, Mentions of Ensemble Cast - Freeform, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Pet Names, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 22:31:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20022091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stubborn_jerk/pseuds/stubborn_jerk
Summary: It should have felt like looking down at that little basket in the Bentley’s passenger seat, like staring down at the crib at the American cultural attaché’s manor. Delectable potential, terrifying potential, the edge overlooking the Eastern Gate as two humans—the first two—walked away with a flaming sword and a baby on the way.It should have felt like something rather ineffable were going to happen.Instead, it felt as if he could have—should have stayed here. The bookshop, his Mayfair flat, the park, London, bugger it all. Leave it for a cottage fit for two and a garage with a door that locks so that the local kids—goat and human—wouldn’t scratch the Bentley’s paint job.in the events between





	Celebrations

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still on hiatus for SIMEFALL. I'm so sorry for all my readers there but I punched this all out in three hours straight and I'm supposed to be having lunch right now so help me god, i will upload this.
> 
> this is my first time writing british characters, so to speak. i hope i got the british english right in there. it's not my first language.

There was something to be said about the way it all fit.

In Crowley’s experience, things only felt snug around him whenever he expected it to. Like, say, a Blaupunkt on a military jeep, or the way he sank against the sofa in the backroom of the bookshop. Those weren’t decisions he’d made, just unconscious things he was only somewhat aware of after the fact. Military jeeps shouldn’t play music, and after centuries of use, most of the sofa’s springs should have fallen out beneath him like renegade angels tied up in doubt.

The way the air held just a tang of belonging in Tadfield felt wrong because it wasn’t _his_.

In his fumbled footing—an angel’s deft and calloused fingers intertwined with his as they both expected the sky to rain sulfur while the Devil Himself rose to the surface to smite them, defiant and grim and together—and a faux pas, Crowley didn’t know what to expect.

Therefore, he thought, as they sank into bench and the jeep drove off with Madame Tracy and Shadwell, it should have felt like potential, like the air before Creation. It should have felt like looking down at that little basket in the Bentley’s passenger seat, like staring down at the crib at the American cultural attaché’s manor. Delectable potential, terrifying potential, the edge overlooking the Eastern Gate as two humans—the first two—walked away with a flaming sword and a baby on the way.

It should have felt like something rather ineffable were going to happen.

Instead, it felt as if he could have— _should_ have stayed here. The bookshop, his Mayfair flat, the park, London, bugger it all. Leave it for a cottage fit for two and a garage with a door that locks so that the local kids—goat and human—wouldn’t scratch the Bentley’s paint job.

No, instead of feeling like he missed a couple of steps on the stairway to Heaven, here he sat with his angel, passing a conjured-up bottle of port between them as they waited for someone to retrieve the Four Artefacts and the ride home, feeling, for all six thousand years of his Earthly citizenship, like he was certain that the sun would rise every morning forevermore.

He’d not been certain of that for the past week alone. It was like stretching his wings for the first time in a century, and it was.

“I think,” Crowley said, voice rough with disuse and the sting of alcohol, “I feel it.”

Aziraphale, understanding this as the alcohol, asked, “What, _already_ , dear? We’ve just started! Were you sober when you drove down here or—"

“I meant what you meant about this place feeling loved.”

Aziraphale hummed. “And here I assumed—”

“I felt it before. S’why that girl ended up hitting my car.”

“You mean—”

“I meant what I meant,” he insisted. It had some satisfaction, cutting Aziraphale off when he spoke. Maybe it was just the demon in him. “I had my guard down, was s’posed to have it down because _he_ wanted it that way.”

“Like he wanted everyone to feel it for the place, yes. I see your point.”

“No, like, he wanted everyone around him to feel safe and settled. I can see the appeal.”

Aziraphale hummed again, inquisitive in its sound this time.

They were slowly settling into that philosophical back and forth they were inclined to do after a few glasses of something alcoholic. Usually they discussed humanity but, well, after what happened at the airbase, Crowley supposed that the Antichrist was human enough to be on topic.

“It’s like… remember when—you know how Greeks used to offer us food and drink all the time when we stopped in for, what was it, just before Troy?”

“Yes, I suppose that was it. We didn’t have the Arrangement back then, but I remember. I think it was at Menelaus’s, just before the conflict started. I was stationed there to dissuade Paris and you were there with War, I think.”

Crowley took a sip then made a noise of affirmation as he swallowed. He hated having to work with War, who was the spitting image of Helen at the time, but it was an assignment he wasn’t allowed to turn down. “Yeah, then. Greeks did it to—to—”

“To say that we’re invited the next time we visit.”

He handed the bottle back. “Right. S’like that.”

Aziraphale huffed. “’Fraid you’ve lost me, my dear. Adam makes Tadfield feel loved to say we’re _invited_ next time we visit?”

Frustrated, Crowley leaned forward on his seat, arms on his knees, rubbing at his perlicue to keep his fingers busy. “S’like, hm.”

He trails off, staring across the field through the tint of his glasses. It was rather ineffable, though he’d hate to say to Aziraphale.

“S’liiiike… Forgiveness. So, to speak.”

“Capital F or…?”

“Both? He wants us to feel settled so that we _know_ that he… he’ll see us again under different circumstances. To know that we’ve grown apart but won’t stray too far.”

“Oh,” was Aziraphale’s delighted response, a surprised close-mouthed grin on his face, the one that crinkled at the eyes and made Crowley feel just a little too human. “Oh, how kind of him. He’s grown rather mature without our supervision, hm?”

Crowley thought back to seven years as a nanny and three as a tutor to Warlock Dowling, Aziraphale at his side the entire decade. A precocious child, that one, spoiled to the bone. If he’d been the Antichrist, Crowley still would have hoped against all hopes that it would have turned out the way it had today. It wasn’t that he and his angel had taught the child anything about Free Will. Quite the opposite, actually.

It was just that, when given enough choices, humans chose for themselves.

Adam, in the end, had chosen just at the edge of selfishness. He wanted to experience the Earth and all it had to offer. He wanted it with his friends, with other humans, with his hound at his side and his bicycle geared towards adventure.

“Can’t help but feel like it was a bit too easy,” Crowley said, because he was nothing if not a realist with just a tinge of optimism. “Six thousand years of preparation for ‘im to renounce the Devil like that. May as well ‘ve been Christened then and there, if you ask me. Just to add to the ridicule of this entire ordeal.”

Aziraphale let out a slow sigh, the one that Crowley knew was a laugh in its own way, laughter he made sure not to let Crowley hear lest Crowley got any ideas making more sacrilegious jokes. It made him grin, the normalcy of the sound, the fondness in the action. It made him hope against all hopes.

“It’s all worked out for the best though,” Aziraphale pointed out after waving away his grin. “Just imagine how awful it had been if we’d been at all competent.”

Crowley took a breath.

Alright, maybe Warlock had a little less of a chance of saving the world than Adam had.

He inclined his head. “Point taken.”

* * *

His angel slid into the seat next to him with that little crinkled smile of his and Crowley thought, _Thank the Almighty_ and thought, _Satan, give me strength_ , and thought, _I thought six thousand years would have prepared me to sit so close beside him but I may have been too trusting of my own ability_ , as Aziraphale set his ringed fingers on Crowley’s knee.

“Dear, y’know I worked it out just before Warlock, but it’s our birthday today.”

Crowley blinked, leaning back to give Aziraphale what he hoped was a discernible incredulous look. “ _Today_?”

Aziraphale checked the bus’ clock, then nodded. “It’s half eleven, so not for long. But, well. Happy birthday to us, I suppose.”

“We have the same birthday as the Antichrist.”

“The Almighty’s birthday was a month ago, too.”

Crowley raised his brow at that. “The _Almighty_ was born?”

“Her son, technically.”

“Ah, dear sweet Yeshua.”

“Exactly. Shame that capitalists moved it to December. Would have been nice to have it on the same month he was conceived, wouldn’t it? A month of celebration.”

“How’d you figure it out, then, our birthdays?”

Aziraphale hummed, then tapped a rhythm on Crowley’s knee, reminding him that it was there. Crowley plucked it off and turned it over, palm up, distracted when his angel says, “James Ussher was right. I dated it all back myself.”

“My, angel,” Crowley drawled, mocking. “ _Someone_ had a lot of time on their hands.”

Aziraphale flicked at his fingers with a huff. Crowley chuckled.

“The twenty-third of October 4004, BC,” Aziraphale recited. “The day the Earth was made, as well as time itself.”

Crowley inclined his head. “But we were made before that. I _Fell_ before that.”

“Yes, but there technically isn’t a Before, if time wasn’t a real concept before it.”

Crowley, who was a demon, didn’t need to be boggled by this concept, of course. But if they were to remain on the side of humans for this, he had to make Aziraphale’s work harder for him to accomplish. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

“No, I suppose not,” Aziraphale admitted openly.

Crowley blinked. “Full of firsts tonight, aren’t we, angel?”

What he meant by this was, when a thing made no sense, Aziraphale turned his nose up and said it was ineffable. It was Free Will. It was God’s plan. Any excuse to keep himself from questioning a bigger purpose, and it didn’t break Crowley’s heart to hear, per se, but it did make him feel just a bit sad.

Aziraphale was so clever, so very clever. He’d figured out how to teach the humans cooking, then taught the Buddhists how to make print, taught them sword-fighting and defense. He figured out when their birthday was.

But he never questioned, only ever wondered and never assumed an answer. He left Crowley to suppose, to ask ‘but why?’, to ask ‘and then what?’

Aziraphale crinkled a smile at him, and Crowley couldn’t say no that. Not even to how Aziraphale tangled their fingers together and pulled Crowley’s hand to his lap. “Yes, I suppose we are. Happy birthday, dear.”

“Happy birthday, angel.”

Neither of them mentioned the strained tone in Crowley’s voice. Six thousand years and three break-ups were enough, he supposed.

* * *

“You’ve got it right already, angel, _please_ , I am begging. You have no idea how humiliating that is.”

“Oh, hush. You said the exact same thing with my sleight of hand, and I _shall_ perfect this because your life very much depends on it, dear. I would prefer to have you alive.”

Crowley groaned and lied down. His body met the mattress faster than he was expecting. It was something to do with his hearing, humans would say. Something to do with the fact that his balance was shifted off a few inches.

Really, it was just that Crowley was unused to having padding. He was snug, at home, pressed down to his core in a hug that wasn’t claustrophobic. Aziraphale’s body really was quite comfortable.

Aziraphale, on the other hand, had seemed restless since he got into Crowley’s. He supposed that’s what he looked like from the outside, mercurial and just a little slinky around the hips. After working on his speech (it took a while to get used to, Crowley knew, remembering a time when he himself had to practice human speech with a snake’s mouth), Aziraphale started working on his walk.

It looked a bit like a dance. It wasn’t the gavotte, with its jaunty beats and violins. No, this one was the type of dance one _felt_ , a rhythm of the soul, the constant sway, sway, sway. Crowley wasn’t a good dancer, and they both knew neither was Aziraphale.

And yet.

Aziraphale turned to him, yellow eyes overtaking his scleras the way Crowley knew they turned when he was on edge. Aziraphale was working himself into a fit. He stood straight clasped his hands, a motion looking wrong on Crowley’s body.

Crowley was constantly nervous, of course, but showed it in hands stuffed in pockets and overstepped strides. Aziraphale liked to close in, clasp his hands and walk with a bit of a bounce on the balls of his feet, knee jittering on the bench between them.

“Do get dressed, dear, it’s already half five, and if Head Office has learned something, it’s that I rise early and open late.” Gentleness seemed natural in his voice, even moreso in Crowley’s. It felt a bit scary, knowing that he had the potential to be that soft.

Hands, bony, angles and knuckles, pulled at his. Crowley rose with the heave, making his face pout all that he knew it could. His mind flashed to the Bastille and guillotines, to the Globe Theater and Hamlet, to Tadfield Manor and blue paintball splat on the back of Aziraphale’s beige coat. His own body, not Aziraphale’s, always reacted to this the only way it knew how, a sinking feeling of delayed indulgence and a tongue that knotted itself into stuttering.

“Oh, that’s—” Aziraphale stuttered, hissed. Sibilants slipping on a forked tongue. “Bugger, that really is unnecessary, dear, stop with the _face_.”

Crowley shrugged his shoulders in the only way he knew Aziraphale did, feeling a bit like he’d been sleeping under the sun for a few minutes. “Serves you right. Now you know how it feels. And _please_ don’t tell me you’ll be speaking to the courts of Hell like that.”

“Of _course_ not,” Aziraphale drawled, a very convincing impression of Crowley’s speech. Here came the rap, the beat for beat questions. “You think just ‘cause I speak to you like this, I’ll talk to anyone else like I’ve known them for six thousand years?” He scoffed, for good effect. “Get dressed, angel. You’re being ridiculous.”

Crowley hummed, then did his best to mimic Aziraphale’s crinkle-smile and cadence. “Alright, dear, since you asked so _nice_ ly.”

“Shout it to the world, why don’t you,” Aziraphale muttered, backing away to pull Crowley to a full stand. He snapped his fingers, a glint in his serpentine eyes. “Breakfast awaits.”

* * *

“Did you take these before we met up?” Aziraphale asked, grabbing his phone off the pristine tablecloth. His voice was delighted and just a little bit apprehensive as he scrolled through Crowley’s gallery. “Oh, not that, surely,” he muttered.

“Yeah, I stopped by my place first. Well, the bookshop, not the flat. There was a full-length mirror in your wardrobe, did you know?” There was a coat of dust over all the horizontal surfaces in that old thing, which meant that Aziraphale hadn’t used it in the past decade or so. Crowley had made sure to think of outfits he knew his angel would wear under little persuasion and found quite a lot.

Aziraphale huffed, shoulder pushing at shoulder. “I _use_ my upstairs place, thanks very much. I just don’t frequent it. I keep my clothes there.”

Crowley, of course, knew this, but lived to taunt his angel anyway. “First time I’m hearing of it.”

“ _Really_. Oh, this. I’d been meaning to purchase something like this for a long time now. Was it comfortable?”

“Very. Go on, pick out a few, we can look for it after we finish here.”

The return of the crinkle-smile, with just a bit of twinkle in his eyes. Crowley, as ever, was weak to it. He thought, of course, that Aziraphale would learn to pull it back after experiencing being him, but no. He seemed alright just being a bit of a twat about it. “Oh, dear boy, I couldn’t…”

“You _should_. We’re celebrating, angel, a little treat shouldn’t hurt.”

His angel brought his glass to his nose, trying and failing to cover that radiant little smile of his. “You’re spoiling me and I feel like I should do something in return.”

“It’s really my pleasure, love. Think of it as a belated birthday gift.”

Oh, the Freudian slip. Would he notice?

“It was both our birthdays yesterday, if I may point out.”

Had he noticed? Crowley hummed, pretending to sound put-upon that Aziraphale wanted to spoil him just as much as he, pretending not to feel just a bit on edge. “What are you treating me to, then.”

Aziraphale smirked. “Well…”

* * *

“Didn’t know you knew how to drive, love.”

His feet were on the dash, his head lolling to the side with sleepiness. The alcohol had caught up to him already. It didn’t take very long, with how smooth his angel drove. He was a bit surprised that the Bentley was cooperating so well.

The Velvet Underground crooned in the Blaupunkt, Pale Blue Eyes having him glance at Aziraphale every other beat.

He was wearing something they’d picked out of Crowley’s phone gallery and grabbed from the shops Aziraphale insisted on. A charcoal Henley! And what a sight it was, the stretch and openness of it across Aziraphale’s hairy chest, a loose cardigan topped with a beige, hooded coat. Fitting washed denim hugged thighs and Crowley wanted to reach across them just to feel them under his fingers, the plump solidity of them.

Despite all this, there was something incredibly distracting to the shift of veins on the back of Aziraphale’s hand as he steered them further and further away from London.

Aziraphale’s gaze barely wavered away from the road. When it did, it was to steal glances at him and it made him feel dangerously close to falling. “Muscle memory. I suppose it’s kind of like with the sword or with velocipedes.”

“ _Bicycle_ , love. It’s called a bicycle. When did you learn?”

“Well, when they came out. I remember you loved it so much when they boomed in the 20s. I had to at least practice, should the opportunity come up.”

Crowley hummed assent, then along with the song.

“This doesn’t sound like Mercury, dearest, what’s this?”

Dearest? Crowley’s glance lingered for a moment. “Velvet Underground.”

“Oh! I thought they were bebop!”

Crowley snorted, licking at his lips. “I don’t even know what you mean by that, angel. Queen isn’t even jazz, it’s _rock_ music.”

Aziraphale made a curious sound.

“What?”

“You switched back to ‘angel’.”

“Switch—?”

“You were calling me ‘love’ all through supper, dearest, I thought you were going to be keeping it up so I switched as well. I wasn’t against it. It’s rather more representative of us, don’t you think?”

Oh, he noticed. And the dearest was intentional.

Oh, to be noticed and called out for it. “You’re not? Against it, I mean.”

“Not at all! I mean, nothing will ever replace the way you call me ‘angel’, but I do like it when you call me ‘love.’”

“Darling, then.”

“Mmhm.”

“Honey?”

“Oh, too much.”

“Sweetheart,” Crowley grinned.

Aziraphale sent him a glance and a tight-lipped grin that had Crowley feeling like running ninety in the Central London. “Well, now we’re just getting literal, love.”

And oh, how gratifying it was, to be called love by an angel. His angel. Crowley reached between them, unable to hold himself back, and grabbed Aziraphale’s ringed fingers from the clutch to bring it to his lips. “Take me anywhere, sweetheart, anywhere you want to go.”

“Not going a bit too fast, then, am I?”

Crowley felt warmed. “Just fast enough. Any slower and I think the Almighty might smite us down Herself, in frustration.”

The resulting laugh was enough of a birthday gift for him.

Aziraphale pulled them over on a field. He walked around the car and indulged when Crowley reached both his hands out and pulled him up with a hug.

They stood there next to the road, under the stars. They’d survived the Apocalypse—however spotty their memory of it now was—and survived Heaven and Hell’s respective wrath.

There was something to be said about the way it all fit.

In Crowley’s experience, things only felt snug when he expected them to. Like, say, Crowley’s sharp angled elbows sticking out, his nose on the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, Aziraphale’s hands on his waist as they breathed each other in. Those weren’t decisions he’d made, just unconscious things he was only somewhat aware of after the fact.

The way the air held just a tang of belonging in their embrace felt fantastic.

It felt like something rather ineffable were going to happen.

Crowley lifted his head. Aziraphale pulled his back. There was no plan, no helping anything. Their lips met and a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.

It felt as if he could have— _should_ have stayed there. The bookshop, his Mayfair flat, the park, London, bugger it all. Leave it for his angel’s arms, a cottage fit for two and a garage with a door that locks so that the local kids—goat and human—wouldn’t scratch the Bentley’s paint job.

“I think,” Crowley said, voice rough with strained love and the taste, so sweet, of Aziraphale. “We should move in together.”

“Oh, definitely. That’ll be it. Happy birthday, my love.”

“ _Belated_ happy birthday, love.”

“Yes, quite.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments are appreciated! any and all typos are because i'm hungry and bc i wrote this in class. sorry, not sorry.


End file.
